As a general rule I avoid channels that make videos that feel like the first and only take. To delve into the genres that frequently suffer from this epidemic I'll touch on Gamers and Beauty Vlogs.
YouTube told us that we had to watch more videos to gain traffic, so for our first six months we watched everything. Then a funny thing happened. I --and I'll use that voice now, leaving the we to them and taking on the responsibility of me; I found myself hating video game channels. It's not the people, those people are fine. It's the volume. More so it's the free marketing for multinational corporations bleeding over into what was once a realm for independent producers to share videos. So unless you're doing stand-up and you can't survive without props, really expensive SOPA/PIPA firing squadable props-- then a walkthrough channel is nothing more than a Vlog that I can't even fully relate to, because I just found myself transported to my ******** friend's house, you know that one that doesn't stop playing their console when they've got company.
I find it a little creepy to watch more than 15 seconds of a make-up tutorial, though I've found some entertaining acts in the genre, I always hear my mother telling me that a lady doesn't apply make-up outside of the house. But now since everything is twitter worthy and we watch the world through LCD viewfinders, I suppose it's nice to meet people that wear make-up. If you're not telling a story or planning for an experience that involves the make-up, especially those videos that are MOS or have only Music playing over the montage-- you may as well make a video of you brushing your teeth. Because it'll gain the same viewership, for grossly the same reasons. You heard me, grossly.
Unboxings, ReplyGirls (Say something more than "I watched this") , Popular Sketch Covers (Your friends reenact the Lonely Island but change the words to "I'm on a Lifeboat" and can only afford Lil' John where clearly it should've been T-Pain.) Comedian "Parodies" (Dane Cook doing Louis C.K.), Cover Songs without new musical accompaniment (follow the bouncing ball), top 40 song lyric videos (Why don't I upload a "Subtitle Films" and make money off of other's work) and finally unedited videogame talk and walkthroughs (30 minutes or less or the Pizza's Free)
These are a few of my least favorite things, but what I do enjoy is the liberty to publish nearly anything and the potential to find an audience. Just because six months of filtering through the every growing database has left me with these opinions, doesn't mean that the videos that an individual makes are of a lower quality than ours. I just fight for the independent narrative filmmakers, especially comedians, which are a minority on the platform named You.
